'Curriculum' Definition Raises Red Flags

By Catherine Gewertz

Ed Week

Calls for shared curriculum for the common standards have triggered renewed debates about who decides what students learn, and even about varied meanings of the word “curriculum,” adding layers of complexity to the job of translating the broad learning goals into classroom teaching.

The most recent calls for common curriculum came from the American Federation of Teachers and the Albert Shanker Institute, a think tank named after the late AFT leader. Many others are working on pieces of that puzzle—an array of instructional resources for states, districts, and teachers. But the calls for “shared” or “common” curricula have sparked particularly heated conversations.

Scholars, bloggers, and activists are exchanging fire about whether shared curriculum means lessons dictated from afar. They’re worrying that the public could lose a voice in shaping what children learn, and asking whether the federal government is overstepping by funding curriculum development.

The common standards, devised by states and content experts under the guidance of governors and state education chiefs, have been adopted by all but seven states.

Some of the debate about common curriculum for the standards is driven, observers say, by the multiple meanings of the word “curriculum.”

To some, that term can mean a scripted, day-to-day lesson plan, while to others, it’s a lean set of big ideas that can be tackled in many ways. In some states, a textbook becomes the de facto curriculum. In others, academic standards and broad outlines called frameworks, with or without model lesson plans and other guidance for teachers, are rolled together and referred to as “state curriculum.” Some school districts purchase off-the-shelf programs they refer to as curricula, and others craft their own.

The multiple meanings of curriculum animate discussions about how to teach the standards. And some observers worry that lack of clarity about the meaning of terms like “curriculum,” “frameworks,” and “curriculum guidelines” risks muddying a public dialogue about an important issue.

“Curriculum is not always easy to define. But it’s crucial that we have clear understandings of what we mean by terms like this,” said J. Wesley Null, an associate professor of curriculum and the foundations of education at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. “Otherwise, we have curriculum being implemented that doesn’t do what states or districts hope it will do.”

Local Control

As controversial as standards can be, curriculum can make people even more nervous because it gets one step closer to the classroom and to defining content, some experts say.

“That’s where dicey decisions need to get made. ....

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